Former Missile Silo Quickly Enlists a Buyer in Nebraska

For the second time this year, a decommissioned missile silo is for sale in Elmwood, NE.

And Mike and Polly Figueroa with BancWise Realty are the listing agents for this one, too.

With an offer already pending after only about a week on the market, this silo is getting an explosive amount of attention—much like the previous silo, which was sold in 12 days to a YouTube influencer.

“He has made several videos about it,” says Mike of the online personality. “That one was in much better condition. The owner had spent about three or four years just clearing it and had made it into a little retreat.”

‘Novelty purchase’

This 5.5-acre property, about 15 minutes from Lincoln, is in rough shape, hence its list price of just $250,000.

The homeowner is “just a collector, and [it] was more of a novelty purchase,” Mike says. “He just thought this would be something really unique but never really had the time or energy or desire to do much with it.”

A door and a staircase lead to one of 12 former Atlas-F missile sites in the state. It is one of only 72 in the country—all of which are found in clusters of 12 in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and New York.

The government decommissioned all Atlas-F missile sites in 1965.

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Missile silo setup

The missile silo is about 180 feet deep and is filled with about 100 feet of groundwater. The silo is roughly 50 feet wide and is adjacent, via an underground tube, to the command centers, Mike explains.

That space is where the military staff would have worked and lived on site. It had a kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and a living space at one time.

The upper floor of the 40-foot-wide structure hosted the living area, while the lower level housed the monitoring systems.

The listing agent is unclear on what remains of those systems.

“There’s one console that’s old and rusted out that’s down there. That might have been where the [launch] button was, but I’m not sure,” Mike says. “It really hasn’t been touched since 1965—other than when the government salvaged stuff out of it.”

The plumbing doesn’t work and neither do the electrical and septic systems.

Still, Mike says the property has attracted lots of interest—especially from people shopping for a doomsday shelter.

“We have other people who are looking at it for just the novelty of it and the fact that it is a piece of Cold War military history,” he says. “Others are looking at what it would take to turn it into a novelty vacation rental.”

Mike estimates it would cost another $250,000 or so to make this silo livable.

“It’s a unique property,” he says. “And it is going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money.”